


We Weep In Strange New Lands

by BannedBloodOranges



Series: Wild Places of Creation [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Bad Ending For DLC, Complicated Relationships, Despair, Joshua's Tough Love, M/M, Pre-Slash, Religious Conflict, Religious Fanaticism, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23297767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: After Joshua Graham successfully assassinates Salt Upon Wounds, Daniel readies himself to live in this strange new land.If only it were that easy.
Relationships: Daniel & Joshua Graham (Fallout), Daniel/Joshua Graham (Fallout)
Series: Wild Places of Creation [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1675477
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	We Weep In Strange New Lands

**Author's Note:**

> Non-profit fun only.

When Joshua Graham ventures forth from the camp, he treads blood in the water. It streaks through the clear blue to the white tide settled against the rocks. It reaches the toes of a Dead Horse child, ambling toward him in the shallows. The rising sun casts warm, hued light rippling through the river, up to the green creeping onto the rocks.

The air is sweet and perfumed. Daniel breathes it in. It is like a childhood that never existed, for a moment, but then it is gone, for the Sorrows move from his side, approaching Joshua in murmurs and prayers. It means little now. Here, his paradise lost.

Zion is dead.

* * *

“Come with me," Joshua speaks with the spirit on his tongue, but his fervour, his bloodlust. Such a thing cannot come from God, yet Daniel recalls tales of floods, plaques, firstborns open and wrecked as the breath of the Lord snaked into houses with unsmeared doorways. Blood of the lamb, to facilitate such sacrifice. "Do not think your gentle voice doesn’t have a place among us."

A change has come upon Joshua. It is less of the remorseful sinner clad in the bandages of his transgressions. It is more of the legend before, brutal Legate who wore legion crimson on his hands as opposed to on his back. Suffrage must be making Daniel cruel, for he could swear there is almost a twist behind the bandage clad up over his chin, that could be a smirk.

"I have nothing to say to you," he turns. He has no future here, he knows that. The Sorrows grow weary of him, offering their backs instead of their ears. Maybe it is to be expected. What did Daniel think that he had an entitlement to their fates? What foolish, short-sighted intention was that? He had only wished for their safety, and through his ignorance, he had instead spared them their own voices.

"Daniel," Joshua speaks so patiently. He is closer than Daniel anticipated, pacing the floor in his silent way. They'd had debates before, almost fights if Daniel was being generous, rounds of scripture their ammo and philosophy lengthening the nights until Daniel had slept in the dry, cool circles of the cave. The temperate clicks as Joshua loaded his beloved guns had been a lullaby, the starch of his bandages creaking around his wounded skin, the scent of salve and grease. It had almost become a comfort. Now, Daniel is not sure if he can even hope to debate with this man. This creature, this children's bogeyman. "I miss our conversations. You were good to me."

He had been. Every two days, he'd made the journey to Joshua. Every two days he'd peeled back the bandages, bit by bit, observing the skin and gristle clung to the wrappings. Joshua had sat still, and breathed slow, and said nothing. The light was low enough for Daniel to wash the flesh, to reapply the salve and begin the laborious ritual of reapplying the bandages. Never had he seen Joshua's face, just the eaten dips of his cheek turned toward the fire, the skin reviled and pink like crackled meat.

Daniel, the fool he was, operated as Joshua's physician.

Perhaps -

"I cannot forgive you for what you've done." He discards the old bindings. They hang loose, ruined, about his hands. This is the last time he shall tend him like a nursemaid."What you have incited. What you have tried to justify, what you have turned on people. Your hatred is like a sickness, Joshua. It infects everything you touch."

"My actions, however harsh you have found them..." Joshua replies, temperate even as anger rises in Daniel at his daring. "...have preserved Zion for its chosen people. This is God's land, Daniel. It abides by God's law. Even if you find some of our tactics...." He pauses, for emphasis. "...disconcerting."

Daniel has spoken his rhetoric many a time. Mercy as an increasingly alien commodity. The warlike structures that birth and cultivate men like the Legate, like Lanius, like Salt Upon Wounds. What is happening now to the tribes, twisting them under Joshua’s design.

“As you claim to burn,” He says. “You burn everyone around you. Friends, family. They turn to ashes because of your actions.”

"You can leave, Daniel." Joshua pulls on his uniform, closing it at the front. There is a notable weariness to the action. Whether by residue pain or irritation, Daniel cannot tell. "It would trouble and grieve our remaining family, and it would be a waste after all the good you have brought to the valley. But I will not stop you."

"Leave?" To have his own thoughts pushed out so publicly stalls his restraint. Is he truly so transparent? "You know I do not want that.”

"Then stay." He replies, the request as softly uttered as a psalm. Daniel shivers. "You will not be forced to fight. There are other matters, spiritual matters, that can be attended to in our communities."

"What matters are they?" Daniel's shout becomes a cry. It tears the quiet. "What teachings can I implement, with honesty, temperance, mercy, when it is submerged in a war cult?"

"The New Canaanites have had to adapt to this brave new world, Daniel," Joshua says, soothingly. He has yet to make a rise to Daniel's anger. "We have to be prepared to protect our flock. To admit peace, we must be ready for war. When the White Legs advanced, we were unprepared." He takes a step closer to Daniel, tucking his scripture into his belt. Side by side with his gun, a dual heaven’s judgement. "Need I remind you of what they wrought, when they came?"

Daniel recoils.

"Joshua...”

"The children picked to pieces in their beds. The elderly, those who paused to breathe mercy, the pregnant women." His glacial eyes spark within the confines of his wrapped skull. "They ripped open their bellies and struck the unborn children against the rocks."

Joshua’s words provoke the memories, like turning slides in his brain. The strangle of fire and screams. The underside of God's creation bore open. Hell, on earth.

"Enough." He whispers. "Do you not think it torments me, as well?”

"If so, then I question your need for doubt." Daniel's back bumps against the table where Joshua tends his beloved guns. He’d been barely aware he was retreating. Joshua idly scratches his chin. The bandages weep open, revealing twists of red flesh. "Or your devotion. Fear is what stalls us, Daniel. God helps those who help themselves."

To have his own words handed back to him slits his tongue and renders him mute. He turns his back, thumbs working against the aged leather of his book. Joshua's candles melt the dark around them, pillowing the walls in soft light.

"Even if it crushes me," He whispers, his brow bowed to his Bible. "I will never accept this merciless way, Joshua. I refuse to condone it. In time, you will become sick of me. I will no longer be welcome in Zion, even among my own people."

"You are a good man, Daniel," Joshua touches his shoulder. Daniel flinches, swallows at the contact. Their touches had only ever been the exchange of medicine, of charity. It had the laying of hands, a meeting point of their faith. None other had been permitted to see Joshua, to clean and care for him so thoroughly. "But this despair troubles me, Daniel. If you so fear me..."

"I do not fear you."

"I beg to differ." He declares, tender. "But it is wise to fear me, and me myself. But you can offer guidance. I will never turn you away, deny you my ear. You are a New Canaanite, Daniel..." And like that, his voice becomes gravel, and his grip vices on the back of Daniel's neck, thumb and forefinger pushing tight on his jugular. "...even if you have forgotten it. And I shall _remind_ you."

They are alone here.

He cannot stop him.

Daniel thrashes, striking out against at Joshua's face and chest. Joshua disarms him easily and calmly squeezes until the world becomes distant, dizzy, the light frayed and fluttering beneath his lashes. 

He wonders if he is about to die. It surprises him, for he never believed Joshua could harm him. Others, yes.

 _How ignorant,_ he thinks, as Joshua forces him back onto the table. _To think I would be exempt from it._

Joshua’s hand pushes up against Daniel's chin as he patiently waits for him to come back to himself. The tang of the salve, so close, burns Daniel's eyes. The bandages scratch every surface of his exposed skin, rubbing raw, rough against his chest and cheeks.

Joshua rises above him. In his hand Daniel can just about detect the shape of a canister, brimming with black oil.

"In the name of the father, his son, his holy ghost," Joshua's words rumble through the caves, touch each hair on Daniel's neck. "For what we have gained, for what we have lost. I anoint thee, for Zion."

He tips it.

Pitch. Gun oil. Stinking. It trickles down his brow, gapes into his mouth. Daniel gags on it, coughing into his fist. Joshua drops the empty canister, lets the hollow clatter of it fill the cave before he seizes Daniel's face, ungentle.

"Now," he says softly. "You are with us. And here, as mediator and medic, as the voice which calms the giants, as the cheek that turns. You are here and belong to every one of us."

Joshua's eyes glint like stripes of blue lightning, and he holds firm until Daniel nods, weary, wet and cold with the oil stinging the burns on his shoulder. Joshua gentles, allowing him to sit up and takes a rag to his face. Daniel, so used to the harsh winds and the harsher words, of empty campfires where people once sat erect with hungry eyes, of darkness falling with no hope to claim it, of dreams where Joshua baptised the children that shall bear their legacy with blood dribbling from his fingers in place of water.

Weakly, he turns his face to the flannel, accepting Joshua's mercies.

It takes him a moment before he realises he is crying like a child.

He folds inward, ashamed, into Joshua, who cups his neck, stroking his hair with his wrapped hands.

"I've failed," He weeps. "I have come here, for nothing. I have brought pain and have no justification for it."

"No." Joshua's mouth, marred beyond recovery, cracks within the rigid hide of his bandages. The shape of his lips lingers by Daniel's ear. "You have merely found another purpose, as of now. Serve it well, and nought shall be in vain."

Daniel shakes in the hands of the Legate. Reborn now, as a nightmare missionary. And Daniel, weak to his temptation, so desperate for need and to be needed in turn, nods against Joshua's chest.

He was so proud. Now, he falters, compromised. All he can pray is for his temperance and Joshua's indulgent ear.

"Daniel, my friend." Joshua's tone changes, corrupt. "My _family_. We shall do great things, for his glory."

The doubt blooms anew.


End file.
